Master bedroom suite

The Davidson home offers a bit of fluff. For the first time, the company offers — at no upgrade premium — a stand-alone bathtub. “We paid a lot of attention to bathrooms and tried to make those more like what you see in hotels,” Bill Davidson said.

Tech center for homework

Recognizing buyers’ concern about schools, Bill Davidson, one of San Diego’s veteran builders, turned the standard upstairs linen closet into a narrow “tech center” for studious youngsters. “We think education has replaced everything when it comes to family values,” Davidson said. “We look at the school and school districts as being the No. 1 driver for home purchases with families. So whether or not you use this as a hall closet, it’s another place to study. We want to take full advantage of that. Those can easily be linen closets. We modeled them as tech centers.” Wife Dawn Davidson said that adults as well as kids could work in these small spaces.

The oversized kitchen island

The idea of an extra-large kitchen island comes from a downtown restaurant, where a party of 10 bellies up to a giant table and chats for hours over good food and drink. Bill Davidson, the developer, adapted the idea for the kitchens at Miraval. You can make do with a standard granite-topped island of about 4 by 6 feet or opt for a super-island — call it a “continent” because it’s so big — as large as 9 feet 4 inches by 8 feet 3 inches. At nearly 80 square feet, that approaches the area of one of the secondary bedrooms. Dawn Davidson, owner of Design Line Interiors and Davidson’s wife, said the island serves many functions — family meals, homework station, craft place, baking and pizza center — “all fun things we do when we live and enjoy life.” “We do think in entertaining you can hardly go to someone’s house and not end up standing in the kitchen,” Bill said. “Add that relationship to the barbecue off the kitchen and the whole thing just works better.”

At developer Bill Davidson’s just-opened upscale Miraval project at Torrey Highlands, east of Carmel Valley, the largest home has room for just two cars. Here are some of the other features.